Incunabula

By Deane Barker tags: books
Updates
This content has been updated 2 times since it was first published. The last update happened .

This refers to printed material from Europe prior to the 1500s. (It’s the plural form; the singular is “incunabule.”)

The etymology is from a Latin word meaning “swaddling clothes,” which refers to the “infancy” of printing during this period. (Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1430s.)

Dictionary.com offers an alternate, more generalized definition:

the earliest stages or first traces of anything.

In this sense, it reminds me of Antediluvian, which literally means a time period before the Great Flood of the Old Testament, but has come to mean, simply, something very old.

Why I Looked It Up

I think it came up a lot in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Then, in Conspiracies and Secret Societies, it was used to identify the inner circle of participants in the secretive Bilderberg Meetings.

Update

Added on

From Once Upon a Tome:

With a smile that did not reach his eyes, he began to shed books everywhere, in a determined fashion that didn’t brook arguments. As he did so, he launched into a breathless diatribe about how important these incunabula were…

Update

Added on

From On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History:

A recognized authority on incunabula – books printed before 1501…

Links from this – Antediluvian March 24, 2023
This technically means “before the Great Flood.” “Diluvial” means “related to a flood.” But, over the years, it’s become a synonym for “old” or “ancient,” when used to refer to non-historical things. “Diluvian” means “related to or brought about by a flood” and “ante” is the prefix for “before.”
Links from this – Cloud Cuckoo Land March 17, 2023
This is the story of a book – a fictional novel by a classic Greek author – and how it moves through the lives of five people over thousands of years. The book tracks through three time periods. 1400s in Europe. A boy is conscripted into The Ottoman Army to sack Constantinople, and a girl in that...
Links from this – Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier of Hidden Plots and Schemes
Links from this – Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller April 5, 2024
I don’t really know what to do with this one. It’s a pretty unique book, but I really liked it. It’s fiction, but not regular fiction. It’s like a series of blog posts written in the first person by a man who went to work at an old book shop in London. Each post is some aspect of what it’s like to...
Links from this – On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History May 2, 2024
This is an…eclectic history of paper. It starts where you would expect it to – somewhere in China, where paper was invented. The author traced the history while on a “paper history” tour. But then the book goes to some fascinating places as it investigates the role paper has played in our lives, in...